8 ms·

What's Going Wrong in Particle Physics? [video]

72 points by xrayarx 4y ago

xrayarx 4y ago
Author is a theoretical physicist currently employed at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.
- T-A 4y ago
  Was: https://sabinehossenfelder.com/research-2/ https://sabinehossenfelder.com/research-2/ "Sabine is currently an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Munich, Germany."
  - astrange 4y ago
    To be more precise she's currently a YouTuber since she doesn't have a research grant right now.
davrosthedalek 4y ago
Another one? It's getting old. She needs a new shtick.
- Pet_Ant 4y ago
  Felt bad that I couldn’t stand one of the only female hard science YouTubers. Then I found Dr Becky: https://m.youtube.com/@DrBecky https://m.youtube.com/@DrBecky Seems to know her shit and doesn’t seem to hate it.
  - was_a_dev 4y ago
    This is essentially my thoughts. Dr Becky is a fantastic science communicator that is clearly very passionate and optimistic about her field
  - jackmott 4y ago
    [dead]
  - maegul 4y ago
    Agree. Also, from what I've gathered, she's relatively junior, in that she only recently completed her PhD and is a postdoc now (thus, I suspect, the "Dr" in the handle?). Which is a good thing! You're getting the perspective, energy, excitement, and focus of someone actually "on the ground" and still pumped about their field. One of the take aways I've got from what I've seen of academia (whether this applies to Sabine or not) is that you'd be surprised how disconnected a senior academic is from the current state of their field. Not that they're ignorant of the latest findings (though, again, you'd be surprised how little time they have actually read papers unless they have to), but they're often not doing actual research at all, not reading the latest papers as widely as a good postdoc would be, and see the field through older often outdated (though sometimes still valuable) lenses, and can be very distracted by their other responsibilities. A young excited researcher is genuinely looking out for the future of their field, and, IMO, I think you can see that Dr Becky
  - k2xl 4y ago
    I actually love both Sabine and Dr Becky. I think they both do a great job with different styles.
  - sho_hn 4y ago
    I find Hossenfelder's style to be very entertaining, it's lovely content. With some of the more opinionated videos I often wish I'd find another similar creator offering a rebuttal or context to help me sort in her take. Of course if you follow this to its logical conclusion you eventually hit "become a scientist, work with the material, form your own opinion", but well, a little bit more aggregation and summary would be of service to me. I guess what Hossenfelder offers me is content above the quality bar of most science journalism, on that spectrum.
    - Retric 4y ago
      Hossenfelder can be entertaining, but even as a non specialist I’ve noticed either oversimplification or errors in her videos. So, I think she needs better collaboration with specialists when operating outside her specialty. The one that comes to mind is when talking about fusion she said the output energy of the reaction * efficiency must be > input energy which seems perfectly logical. Except the input energy doesn’t all disappear much of it ends up in the plasma which in a steady state is then converted at some efficiency to electricity again. This is why Q is considered independently of the total power used by the facility which goes on to invalidate much of the rest of the video. I don’t know if that was intentional oversimplification or a mistake on her part, but it makes me question the accuracy of her videos on other topics.
      - sho_hn 4y ago
        I've noticed a few things like this as well. I vaguely recall not liking a calculation in a nuclear energy video she did because she omitted thorium from the topic - I'm no expert, but I was awaiting her to address it next to her discussion of uranium reserves and was confused by its absence.
  - davrosthedalek 4y ago
    There is also "My Journey as a Physicist". Haven't listened to it yet, but I hear good things from my colleagues. [1] https://sites.google.com/msu.edu/phy480905/home?pli=1 https://sites.google.com/msu.edu/phy480905/home?pli=1
- Y_Y 4y ago
  To be fair, high energy experiments are still taking up a lot of money and effort. If you agree with her arguments then maybe it's a horse worth beating. I have some concerns about the dark matter point but I think she is more or less right and I think it sucks to be competing for funding with work that's not well-directed.
  - davrosthedalek 4y ago
    Well, it's pretty clear that she wants to be funded, but funding decisions in research are mostly consensus -- the field decides what's funded, and I guess she couldn't convince enough people to get funded. But how else should be? In a regime with limited funds, after it has been decided how much money to give to HEP, isn't it the best if the HEP community decides how to spend it? Of course, she thinks spending on other work is not well directed, but others think spending it on her work is not well directed. While I think that maybe we just fund all (because really, it's not that much money -- for her group, we probably talk about a couple of shot-down balloon kind of money [Sidewinder is >300k], for several years worth of research), we do not live in that world. I want to note, though, that this "controversy", is very important for her book sales. I am not convinced that these books actually bring the field forward.
    - jackmott 4y ago
      [dead]
    - lll-o-lll 4y ago
      Ahh yes, why engage with the arguments when it’s so much easier to just attack the person? https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1624398748410421248?s=20&t=IolRa2L1hLRyBMbULILeSw https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1624398748410421248?s=20&t=I... Maybe address one or two of her actual points and try to refute them?
    - naasking 4y ago
      > But how else should be? In a regime with limited funds, after it has been decided how much money to give to HEP, isn't it the best if the HEP community decides how to spend it? No, because the vested interests have blinders on because they're invested in current paradigms. They could get stuck trying to find a local optimum rather than the global optimum we actually want. External objective assessments are sometimes needed, and Sabine is making a good case that particle physicists need a wake up call to get out of their rut. She won't convince the currently entrenched interests, but hopefully she's convincing graduate students that will start gaining influence over the next decade.
- k2xl 4y ago
  Care to elaborate? I'm no physicist but the video seemed rational? What is your issue with her arguments?
  - SiempreViernes 4y ago
    One issue is that it's just (essentially) repeating things that she has said before: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-lhc-may-spell-end-of-particle.html http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-lhc-may-spell-e... But the bigger issue is that all she's saying is that there is a problem (which everyone in the field knows) but doesn't offer any solution. Note for example the bit about how there are many possible choices for what thing to test next, but only a finite amount of resources to do the tests which makes how one chooses what to try next a very important factor. What modification does she propose to ensure it is done better? None! She just says "do it better", possibly thinking that is helpful advice? So in summary these days Hossenfelder is being _exactly_ as helpful as the college that rolls in to your office, and, while filming for tiktok, glances at your screen and tells you to fix that stubborn segfault you have been struggling to debug for the last three hours.
    - sander27home 4y ago
      Watch the video again. She offered solution. Look into papersthat expound necessary to current model not keep on making science so complicated. If any of tbose papers are real and correct, they would discovered something. As of now...that records stand at ZERO. It burns away useful research grants that would be better put into useful paper research but alas, big names in particle physics dictate more money need to fund their hypothesis because around the corner they will make the discovery....if not....who cares.
    - naasking 4y ago
      > But the bigger issue is that all she's saying is that there is a problem (which everyone in the field knows) but doesn't offer any solution. The solution is to stop pretending there's a problem to solve when there isn't. That's literally what she's saying. The obvious corollary is, "work on real problems instead of pseudo problems and stop trying to take funding away from people working on real problems". It seems perfectly obvious that we've passed the point of diminishing returns and it's time to focus on other things until we have a compelling reason to revisit this.
- nosianu 4y ago
  I will never understand comments like this, where the author had to actively click on one of a large number of headlines to even get there, and than make a deliberate decision to spend even more effort on writing a comment. You don't provide any information for evaluation, all we know is that you think you heard it too often. And why make a disparaging comment about her on top of that, without any substance added? I would not have added a comment if I didn't find it disturbing how much attention your mean comment gets. Another person even saying they cannot "stand her" - of course also without anything of substance added. I hate adding my own comment along this mean-spirited, substance-free and OT thread, but I don't want to say nothing either. If you dislike the topic, just don't click. Easy. Or, provide some real meat for the discussion, not an expression of personal dislike, especially not of the person, unless they actually did something despicable worthy of such dislike.
  - karpierz 4y ago
    I think GP's disappointment isn't that there's another video complaining about particle physics. I think they're complaining about Sabine making another video where she repeats the same unsubstantiated complaints. And they were disappointed because they are interested in novel critique of particle physics, and were let down.
    - astrange 4y ago
      Can't be any novel critiques of particle physics if the physicists themselves never do anything novel to be criticized for.
    - naasking 4y ago
      > I think they're complaining about Sabine making another video where she repeats the same unsubstantiated complaints. What a weird comment. They're not substantiated at all, the whole video is literally substantiating her position, and does it quite well IMO.
    - sho_hn 4y ago
      > unsubstantiated complaints In what way? Her line of reasoning was easy to follow and she gave some specific examples. Given the length and medium I felt it was substantial, certainly enough for a rebuttal. What's missing?
- chongli 4y ago
  This is the only ‘shtick’ she has left. She’s already burned all her bridges with her field. She’s now become a professional gadfly. This happens to anyone who goes into a highly specialized, close-knit academic field; has a private disagreement with their field; and subsequently goes public.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dave333 4y ago
[flagged]
- JoBrad 4y ago
  What is this, and how does it relate to the topic?
  - dave333 4y ago
    It's a device that produces electricity from dark matter.
lll-o-lll 4y ago
Sabine has spoken on this topic a number of times, but I think this is the clearest explanation I’ve seen of why the current research approaches are so unlikely to make efficient progress. Get it together people! Quantum Gravity, I want some answers!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hackandthink 4y ago
I think Sabine Hossenfelder is right. Random hypotheses (here particles) are not good science. I am not sure whether Popper is the right reference. Karl Popper: "a theory should be considered scientific if, and only if, it is falsifiable." (1) (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  As her Venn diagram showed, 'scientific' is a subset of 'falsifiable'. Scientific requires falsifiable, but falsifiable doesn't by itself imply scientific. 'In five minutes the Pacific Ocean will turn to liquid gold' is falsifiable but not scientific. Why would you predict that, what data does it align with, what model of matter and liquids does it work with, by what mechanism might it happen, why five minutes and not sooner or later, etc?
- davrosthedalek 4y ago
  They are not that random. They typically are motivated by some observation of something, for example discrepancies from Standard Model predictions, or obvious holes in the SM (like the Higgs). Yes, there a many, and people jump on many things which turn out to be noise. But "new particle" as the solution has a rather impressive track record: Atoms, Nuclei, Nucleons, Quarks, Neutrinos, Higgs. The list is not complete.
  - hackandthink 4y ago
    OK. She detailed her point with the Higgs boson. There was an internal inconsistency and the Standard Model needed the Higgs boson. There may be different point of views: your particle is random but mine is a great idea and cleans up the theory. But I actually thought when listening to her talk: isn't it fine thinking about and looking for particles in the next energy range. (we spend money for so many stupid things, 50 * 10^9 Euros (next accelerator) is not so much money related to 500 million people)
    - davrosthedalek 4y ago
tsimionescu 4y ago
Text version, for those who prefer it (from the author's own blog). http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/02/whats-going-wrong-in-particle-physics.html?m=1 http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/02/whats-going-wrong-i...
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  What is the point of posting a link to a blog that simply embeds the video?
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    Oooops, I was so used to the text being there that I just grabbed the link and didn't even check... So silly of her to move it behind a paywall.
- amadsen 4y ago
  Behind a paywall.
lumost 4y ago
My experience going through physics in undergrad + 1 year of grad school was that we had made enough progress that it takes ~8 years of book learning to get to a basic competency at the forefront of a narrow part of physics. If you want to make a fundamental connection with a different field.. then adding enough knowledge to be able to formulate your hypothesis will take ~1-2 years of further book reading. Unfortunately people have finite lifespans, and by the time someone hits their mid-thirties - children and other priorities will start pulling you away from working 40-60 hours for subsistence wages. The Risk budget for exploring ideas shrinks. I'm honestly curious if ChatGPT will help in this regard. Working with ChatGPT on physics/math problems allows one to get immediate knowledgable feedback on any idea - you can even have ChatGPT write out a semi-broken version of complex derivations if you just want to see if anything interesting comes out of the idea. I'm
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  I'd be curious to know what it's like in big tech firms who are doing quantum computing. Is that well-funded cutting edge science? Or if not, what is it like?
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  I'm more bullish on something like UBI advancing the cause of particle physics. If there was 0 risk that your family was going to go hungry/become homeless, it'd be easier to stomach the many years of training required to get to the forefront of physics.
  - atlantic 4y ago
    It would be much easier to make the case for UBI for particle physicists than for the general population.
    - jerf 4y ago
      That's not "UBI" though. That's some funding mechanism that allows for more broad fishing without having to call every shot in advance, and penalizing people who then don't find what they were hoping to find. Though at this point, which is easier between "societal UBI" and "changing how science is funded" is anybody's guess. Nominally, it ought to be the latter, but it may actually be more entrenched....
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Why do the big fruitless experiments get funded? Are they funded for non-scientific reasons such as creating jobs, engineering experience gained from building the thing, etc?
- consilient 4y ago
  If we knew whether experiments were going to be fruitful ahead of time we wouldn't need to perform them in the first place.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Are all guesses equally likely to bear fruit?
zajio1am 4y ago
The problem with Sabine Hossenfelder's dismissing way of reporting is that it makes an impression that she does not faithfully represent the position of the other side.
- sho_hn 4y ago
  Are you implying it does, and that impression is false? I'm not sure how to read you.
  - zajio1am 4y ago
    I do not know. I just say that if one demeans their opponents in such way, then it makes those statements less trustworthy (it increases estimation of being a strawman). That is obviously a heuristic - in principle one can make demeaning but fair argument, and also tone-correct but strawmanny argument.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  That's a great heuristic to give the point to anybody that holds indefensable positions. I recommend people to be much more interested on whether she is actually right or not, instead of whether the views that she opposes are simply bad. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that very few people actually hold all of those bad ideas as true (I'm met more than one, so they exist). But the normalized speech of the area surely did, and for quite a long time (I believe it's changing). And that's what reaches students and news, not the detailed opinion of individuals.
Sniffnoy 4y ago
I think the video's thesis is overstated; in this video Hossenfelder makes it sound like there are no (real) problems with the Standard Model and therefore no necessary reason to postulate any new particles. While I agree completely with Hossenfelder about "pseudo-problems" such as the hierarchy problem not being real problems in need of a solution, my understanding is that there is at least one real problem and the solution may require new particles. Specifically, neutrino oscillation is experimentally confirmed, but my understanding is that you can't just bolt it on to the Standard Model without getting inconsistencies unless you make one of the following two changes: Either make neutrinos their own antiparticles, or introduce sterile neutrinos. That seems like a pretty good reason to look for sterile neutrinos! Also, I have to disagree with what she says about dark matter (or modified gravity, the distinction is irrelevant here -- both presumably introduce new particles); to say "All we need to know is the distribution of it so we can make predictions, who cares what it actually consists of?"... to my mind the point of fundamental physics should be to build a complete model of the laws of physics, and that sort of instrumentalism is just giving up. (We can also generalize from this to other cases where problems from cosmology or other areas of physics would seem to require explanations from particle physics, e.g., baryogenesis, since the Standard Model doesn't seem to produce enough CP-violation to explain that. I don't think it makes sense to exclude such indirect evidence from other fields when we speak of tests of the standard model.) None of this is to disagree that there's a lot of work on what Hossenfelder calls "pseudo-problems", which I agree seems to have produce a lot of failed predictions for little reason.
- davrosthedalek 4y ago
  Well, as you indicate, you think that some of the problems she labels as pseudo are not pseudo. But who is to decide which are pseudo problems, and which are not? And you are absolutely right about the "who cares" stance. If our estimates of DM and dark energy are right, only 5% or so of total energy in the universe is in SM physics (visible matter). How can we be satisfied with that?
  - Sniffnoy 4y ago
    The distinction is easy to make because she draws a pretty bright line, one I agree with. The video doesn't mistakenly class the problem I mentioned as a pseudo-problem; rather, it fails to discuss it at all. Hossenfelder is pretty clear that internal inconsistencies are real problems. The problems she dismisses as pseudo-problems are attempts to explain the values of free parameters or otherwise try to explain the "origin" of the laws of physics. This doesn't fall under that.
Vox_Leone 4y ago
For me her positions are like a breath of fresh air. Sabine brings valid epistemological questions from a totally original angle. The questioning of the methods of the Academia is science in its purest form. The truth will only come out of this kind of stance.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  Well, she's been at it for several years by now. How about she posts a report on the bountiful yield here critiques has resulted in?
  - pringk02 4y ago
    I'm not sure I understand this argument? Her critique is about a lack of results in particle physics beyond the standard model. What is the bounty that critique is to produce in results? It would be disproved not by further lack of results, but rather the opposite: new results and the detection of particles outside the standard model
    - SiempreViernes 4y ago
      Then see the context provided by the comment I responded to, as it clearly sells her questioning as productive and not simply whining about slow progress.
Perceval 4y ago
It seems like Hossenfelder is arguing that a lot of theoretical physics is Lakatos degenerative: * https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/ * https://aeon.co/essays/imre-lakatos-and-the-philosophy-of-bad-science https://aeon.co/essays/imre-lakatos-and-the-philosophy-of-ba... * https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Imre_Lakatos https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Imre_Lakatos > The difference between a progressive and a degenerative research programme lies, for Lakatos, in whether the recent changes to its auxiliary hypotheses have achieved this greater explanatory/predictive power or whether they have been made simply out of the necessity of offering some response in the face of new and troublesome evidence.
quantum_mcts 4y ago
"the world could well live without the Higgs boson" (c) Sabine Hossenfelder https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/what_it_means_to_be_antiscience-250570 https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/what_it_means_to_be...
saul_goodman 4y ago
Very good talk. However I would only disagree with her on the idea that funding will dry up for particle physicists and that the model of funding helps to drive the useless cycle if bad ideas in physics (and any government funded science). 1) Obtaining grants to continue study in any field of science is greatly improved if you are iterating on an established idea that is already understood. Getting a grant on a completely novel idea outside of the mainstream field of thoughts is going to be much harder. Along with this is the reality that government grants are managed by a revolving door of industry and university insiders which is both a terrible and great thing. On one hand you don't want lobotomized bureaunaughts making uninformed decisions on which researchers to support. On the other hand your knowledgable staff on granting agencies are going to be the ~top of a given field and as such will weed out non-mainstream ideas for funding as "they already know" that a new line of thought to be foley. 2) While governments freely waste taxpayers money, they still do it strategically. After Hiroshima the world understood how important it is to keep a close eye on the physics community. Every country with a viable nuclear program must continue to engage in this game of useless increments in particle physics. Making progress is not what is important, what is truly important is that a country has its own base of physics knowledge and active development so that should another physics breakthrough happen elsewhere then they have a chance of recreating it on their own within a short enough window for it to make a difference. If you didn't already have physicists engaged in their craft then you would be 5-10 years behind the curve of any post-nuclear-physics breakthrough. The same game is played in many other fields of science...

72 points by xrayarx 4y ago

xrayarx 4y ago

Author is a theoretical physicist currently employed at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.

T-A 4y ago
Was: https://sabinehossenfelder.com/research-2/ https://sabinehossenfelder.com/research-2/ "Sabine is currently an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Munich, Germany."
- astrange 4y ago
  To be more precise she's currently a YouTuber since she doesn't have a research grant right now.

davrosthedalek 4y ago

Another one? It's getting old. She needs a new shtick.

Pet_Ant 4y ago
Felt bad that I couldn’t stand one of the only female hard science YouTubers. Then I found Dr Becky: https://m.youtube.com/@DrBecky https://m.youtube.com/@DrBecky Seems to know her shit and doesn’t seem to hate it.
- was_a_dev 4y ago
  This is essentially my thoughts. Dr Becky is a fantastic science communicator that is clearly very passionate and optimistic about her field
- jackmott 4y ago
  [dead]
- maegul 4y ago
  Agree. Also, from what I've gathered, she's relatively junior, in that she only recently completed her PhD and is a postdoc now (thus, I suspect, the "Dr" in the handle?). Which is a good thing! You're getting the perspective, energy, excitement, and focus of someone actually "on the ground" and still pumped about their field. One of the take aways I've got from what I've seen of academia (whether this applies to Sabine or not) is that you'd be surprised how disconnected a senior academic is from the current state of their field. Not that they're ignorant of the latest findings (though, again, you'd be surprised how little time they have actually read papers unless they have to), but they're often not doing actual research at all, not reading the latest papers as widely as a good postdoc would be, and see the field through older often outdated (though sometimes still valuable) lenses, and can be very distracted by their other responsibilities. A young excited researcher is genuinely looking out for the future of their field, and, IMO, I think you can see that Dr Becky
- k2xl 4y ago
  I actually love both Sabine and Dr Becky. I think they both do a great job with different styles.
- sho_hn 4y ago
  I find Hossenfelder's style to be very entertaining, it's lovely content. With some of the more opinionated videos I often wish I'd find another similar creator offering a rebuttal or context to help me sort in her take. Of course if you follow this to its logical conclusion you eventually hit "become a scientist, work with the material, form your own opinion", but well, a little bit more aggregation and summary would be of service to me. I guess what Hossenfelder offers me is content above the quality bar of most science journalism, on that spectrum.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Hossenfelder can be entertaining, but even as a non specialist I’ve noticed either oversimplification or errors in her videos. So, I think she needs better collaboration with specialists when operating outside her specialty. The one that comes to mind is when talking about fusion she said the output energy of the reaction * efficiency must be > input energy which seems perfectly logical. Except the input energy doesn’t all disappear much of it ends up in the plasma which in a steady state is then converted at some efficiency to electricity again. This is why Q is considered independently of the total power used by the facility which goes on to invalidate much of the rest of the video. I don’t know if that was intentional oversimplification or a mistake on her part, but it makes me question the accuracy of her videos on other topics.
    - sho_hn 4y ago
      I've noticed a few things like this as well. I vaguely recall not liking a calculation in a nuclear energy video she did because she omitted thorium from the topic - I'm no expert, but I was awaiting her to address it next to her discussion of uranium reserves and was confused by its absence.
- davrosthedalek 4y ago
  There is also "My Journey as a Physicist". Haven't listened to it yet, but I hear good things from my colleagues. [1] https://sites.google.com/msu.edu/phy480905/home?pli=1 https://sites.google.com/msu.edu/phy480905/home?pli=1
Y_Y 4y ago
To be fair, high energy experiments are still taking up a lot of money and effort. If you agree with her arguments then maybe it's a horse worth beating. I have some concerns about the dark matter point but I think she is more or less right and I think it sucks to be competing for funding with work that's not well-directed.
- davrosthedalek 4y ago
  Well, it's pretty clear that she wants to be funded, but funding decisions in research are mostly consensus -- the field decides what's funded, and I guess she couldn't convince enough people to get funded. But how else should be? In a regime with limited funds, after it has been decided how much money to give to HEP, isn't it the best if the HEP community decides how to spend it? Of course, she thinks spending on other work is not well directed, but others think spending it on her work is not well directed. While I think that maybe we just fund all (because really, it's not that much money -- for her group, we probably talk about a couple of shot-down balloon kind of money [Sidewinder is >300k], for several years worth of research), we do not live in that world. I want to note, though, that this "controversy", is very important for her book sales. I am not convinced that these books actually bring the field forward.
  - jackmott 4y ago
    [dead]
  - lll-o-lll 4y ago
    Ahh yes, why engage with the arguments when it’s so much easier to just attack the person? https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1624398748410421248?s=20&t=IolRa2L1hLRyBMbULILeSw https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1624398748410421248?s=20&t=I... Maybe address one or two of her actual points and try to refute them?
  - naasking 4y ago
    > But how else should be? In a regime with limited funds, after it has been decided how much money to give to HEP, isn't it the best if the HEP community decides how to spend it? No, because the vested interests have blinders on because they're invested in current paradigms. They could get stuck trying to find a local optimum rather than the global optimum we actually want. External objective assessments are sometimes needed, and Sabine is making a good case that particle physicists need a wake up call to get out of their rut. She won't convince the currently entrenched interests, but hopefully she's convincing graduate students that will start gaining influence over the next decade.
k2xl 4y ago
Care to elaborate? I'm no physicist but the video seemed rational? What is your issue with her arguments?
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  One issue is that it's just (essentially) repeating things that she has said before: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-lhc-may-spell-end-of-particle.html http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-lhc-may-spell-e... But the bigger issue is that all she's saying is that there is a problem (which everyone in the field knows) but doesn't offer any solution. Note for example the bit about how there are many possible choices for what thing to test next, but only a finite amount of resources to do the tests which makes how one chooses what to try next a very important factor. What modification does she propose to ensure it is done better? None! She just says "do it better", possibly thinking that is helpful advice? So in summary these days Hossenfelder is being _exactly_ as helpful as the college that rolls in to your office, and, while filming for tiktok, glances at your screen and tells you to fix that stubborn segfault you have been struggling to debug for the last three hours.
  - sander27home 4y ago
    Watch the video again. She offered solution. Look into papersthat expound necessary to current model not keep on making science so complicated. If any of tbose papers are real and correct, they would discovered something. As of now...that records stand at ZERO. It burns away useful research grants that would be better put into useful paper research but alas, big names in particle physics dictate more money need to fund their hypothesis because around the corner they will make the discovery....if not....who cares.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > But the bigger issue is that all she's saying is that there is a problem (which everyone in the field knows) but doesn't offer any solution. The solution is to stop pretending there's a problem to solve when there isn't. That's literally what she's saying. The obvious corollary is, "work on real problems instead of pseudo problems and stop trying to take funding away from people working on real problems". It seems perfectly obvious that we've passed the point of diminishing returns and it's time to focus on other things until we have a compelling reason to revisit this.
nosianu 4y ago
I will never understand comments like this, where the author had to actively click on one of a large number of headlines to even get there, and than make a deliberate decision to spend even more effort on writing a comment. You don't provide any information for evaluation, all we know is that you think you heard it too often. And why make a disparaging comment about her on top of that, without any substance added? I would not have added a comment if I didn't find it disturbing how much attention your mean comment gets. Another person even saying they cannot "stand her" - of course also without anything of substance added. I hate adding my own comment along this mean-spirited, substance-free and OT thread, but I don't want to say nothing either. If you dislike the topic, just don't click. Easy. Or, provide some real meat for the discussion, not an expression of personal dislike, especially not of the person, unless they actually did something despicable worthy of such dislike.
- karpierz 4y ago
  I think GP's disappointment isn't that there's another video complaining about particle physics. I think they're complaining about Sabine making another video where she repeats the same unsubstantiated complaints. And they were disappointed because they are interested in novel critique of particle physics, and were let down.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Can't be any novel critiques of particle physics if the physicists themselves never do anything novel to be criticized for.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > I think they're complaining about Sabine making another video where she repeats the same unsubstantiated complaints. What a weird comment. They're not substantiated at all, the whole video is literally substantiating her position, and does it quite well IMO.
  - sho_hn 4y ago
    > unsubstantiated complaints In what way? Her line of reasoning was easy to follow and she gave some specific examples. Given the length and medium I felt it was substantial, certainly enough for a rebuttal. What's missing?
chongli 4y ago
This is the only ‘shtick’ she has left. She’s already burned all her bridges with her field. She’s now become a professional gadfly. This happens to anyone who goes into a highly specialized, close-knit academic field; has a private disagreement with their field; and subsequently goes public.
jodrellblank 4y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dave333 4y ago

[flagged]

JoBrad 4y ago
What is this, and how does it relate to the topic?
- dave333 4y ago
  It's a device that produces electricity from dark matter.

lll-o-lll 4y ago

Sabine has spoken on this topic a number of times, but I think this is the clearest explanation I’ve seen of why the current research approaches are so unlikely to make efficient progress. Get it together people! Quantum Gravity, I want some answers!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hackandthink 4y ago

I think Sabine Hossenfelder is right. Random hypotheses (here particles) are not good science. I am not sure whether Popper is the right reference. Karl Popper: "a theory should be considered scientific if, and only if, it is falsifiable." (1) (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper

jodrellblank 4y ago
As her Venn diagram showed, 'scientific' is a subset of 'falsifiable'. Scientific requires falsifiable, but falsifiable doesn't by itself imply scientific. 'In five minutes the Pacific Ocean will turn to liquid gold' is falsifiable but not scientific. Why would you predict that, what data does it align with, what model of matter and liquids does it work with, by what mechanism might it happen, why five minutes and not sooner or later, etc?
davrosthedalek 4y ago
They are not that random. They typically are motivated by some observation of something, for example discrepancies from Standard Model predictions, or obvious holes in the SM (like the Higgs). Yes, there a many, and people jump on many things which turn out to be noise. But "new particle" as the solution has a rather impressive track record: Atoms, Nuclei, Nucleons, Quarks, Neutrinos, Higgs. The list is not complete.
- hackandthink 4y ago
  OK. She detailed her point with the Higgs boson. There was an internal inconsistency and the Standard Model needed the Higgs boson. There may be different point of views: your particle is random but mine is a great idea and cleans up the theory. But I actually thought when listening to her talk: isn't it fine thinking about and looking for particles in the next energy range. (we spend money for so many stupid things, 50 * 10^9 Euros (next accelerator) is not so much money related to 500 million people)
  - davrosthedalek 4y ago

tsimionescu 4y ago

Text version, for those who prefer it (from the author's own blog). http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/02/whats-going-wrong-in-particle-physics.html?m=1 http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/02/whats-going-wrong-i...

SiempreViernes 4y ago
What is the point of posting a link to a blog that simply embeds the video?
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Oooops, I was so used to the text being there that I just grabbed the link and didn't even check... So silly of her to move it behind a paywall.
amadsen 4y ago
Behind a paywall.

lumost 4y ago

My experience going through physics in undergrad + 1 year of grad school was that we had made enough progress that it takes ~8 years of book learning to get to a basic competency at the forefront of a narrow part of physics. If you want to make a fundamental connection with a different field.. then adding enough knowledge to be able to formulate your hypothesis will take ~1-2 years of further book reading. Unfortunately people have finite lifespans, and by the time someone hits their mid-thirties - children and other priorities will start pulling you away from working 40-60 hours for subsistence wages. The Risk budget for exploring ideas shrinks. I'm honestly curious if ChatGPT will help in this regard. Working with ChatGPT on physics/math problems allows one to get immediate knowledgable feedback on any idea - you can even have ChatGPT write out a semi-broken version of complex derivations if you just want to see if anything interesting comes out of the idea. I'm

robertlagrant 4y ago
I'd be curious to know what it's like in big tech firms who are doing quantum computing. Is that well-funded cutting edge science? Or if not, what is it like?
jobs_throwaway 4y ago
I'm more bullish on something like UBI advancing the cause of particle physics. If there was 0 risk that your family was going to go hungry/become homeless, it'd be easier to stomach the many years of training required to get to the forefront of physics.
- atlantic 4y ago
  It would be much easier to make the case for UBI for particle physicists than for the general population.
  - jerf 4y ago
    That's not "UBI" though. That's some funding mechanism that allows for more broad fishing without having to call every shot in advance, and penalizing people who then don't find what they were hoping to find. Though at this point, which is easier between "societal UBI" and "changing how science is funded" is anybody's guess. Nominally, it ought to be the latter, but it may actually be more entrenched....

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Why do the big fruitless experiments get funded? Are they funded for non-scientific reasons such as creating jobs, engineering experience gained from building the thing, etc?

consilient 4y ago
If we knew whether experiments were going to be fruitful ahead of time we wouldn't need to perform them in the first place.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Are all guesses equally likely to bear fruit?

zajio1am 4y ago

The problem with Sabine Hossenfelder's dismissing way of reporting is that it makes an impression that she does not faithfully represent the position of the other side.

sho_hn 4y ago
Are you implying it does, and that impression is false? I'm not sure how to read you.
- zajio1am 4y ago
  I do not know. I just say that if one demeans their opponents in such way, then it makes those statements less trustworthy (it increases estimation of being a strawman). That is obviously a heuristic - in principle one can make demeaning but fair argument, and also tone-correct but strawmanny argument.
marcosdumay 4y ago
That's a great heuristic to give the point to anybody that holds indefensable positions. I recommend people to be much more interested on whether she is actually right or not, instead of whether the views that she opposes are simply bad. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that very few people actually hold all of those bad ideas as true (I'm met more than one, so they exist). But the normalized speech of the area surely did, and for quite a long time (I believe it's changing). And that's what reaches students and news, not the detailed opinion of individuals.

Sniffnoy 4y ago

I think the video's thesis is overstated; in this video Hossenfelder makes it sound like there are no (real) problems with the Standard Model and therefore no necessary reason to postulate any new particles. While I agree completely with Hossenfelder about "pseudo-problems" such as the hierarchy problem not being real problems in need of a solution, my understanding is that there is at least one real problem and the solution may require new particles. Specifically, neutrino oscillation is experimentally confirmed, but my understanding is that you can't just bolt it on to the Standard Model without getting inconsistencies unless you make one of the following two changes: Either make neutrinos their own antiparticles, or introduce sterile neutrinos. That seems like a pretty good reason to look for sterile neutrinos! Also, I have to disagree with what she says about dark matter (or modified gravity, the distinction is irrelevant here -- both presumably introduce new particles); to say "All we need to know is the distribution of it so we can make predictions, who cares what it actually consists of?"... to my mind the point of fundamental physics should be to build a complete model of the laws of physics, and that sort of instrumentalism is just giving up. (We can also generalize from this to other cases where problems from cosmology or other areas of physics would seem to require explanations from particle physics, e.g., baryogenesis, since the Standard Model doesn't seem to produce enough CP-violation to explain that. I don't think it makes sense to exclude such indirect evidence from other fields when we speak of tests of the standard model.) None of this is to disagree that there's a lot of work on what Hossenfelder calls "pseudo-problems", which I agree seems to have produce a lot of failed predictions for little reason.

davrosthedalek 4y ago
Well, as you indicate, you think that some of the problems she labels as pseudo are not pseudo. But who is to decide which are pseudo problems, and which are not? And you are absolutely right about the "who cares" stance. If our estimates of DM and dark energy are right, only 5% or so of total energy in the universe is in SM physics (visible matter). How can we be satisfied with that?
- Sniffnoy 4y ago
  The distinction is easy to make because she draws a pretty bright line, one I agree with. The video doesn't mistakenly class the problem I mentioned as a pseudo-problem; rather, it fails to discuss it at all. Hossenfelder is pretty clear that internal inconsistencies are real problems. The problems she dismisses as pseudo-problems are attempts to explain the values of free parameters or otherwise try to explain the "origin" of the laws of physics. This doesn't fall under that.

Vox_Leone 4y ago

For me her positions are like a breath of fresh air. Sabine brings valid epistemological questions from a totally original angle. The questioning of the methods of the Academia is science in its purest form. The truth will only come out of this kind of stance.

SiempreViernes 4y ago
Well, she's been at it for several years by now. How about she posts a report on the bountiful yield here critiques has resulted in?
- pringk02 4y ago
  I'm not sure I understand this argument? Her critique is about a lack of results in particle physics beyond the standard model. What is the bounty that critique is to produce in results? It would be disproved not by further lack of results, but rather the opposite: new results and the detection of particles outside the standard model
  - SiempreViernes 4y ago
    Then see the context provided by the comment I responded to, as it clearly sells her questioning as productive and not simply whining about slow progress.

Perceval 4y ago

It seems like Hossenfelder is arguing that a lot of theoretical physics is Lakatos degenerative: * https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/ * https://aeon.co/essays/imre-lakatos-and-the-philosophy-of-bad-science https://aeon.co/essays/imre-lakatos-and-the-philosophy-of-ba... * https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Imre_Lakatos https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Imre_Lakatos > The difference between a progressive and a degenerative research programme lies, for Lakatos, in whether the recent changes to its auxiliary hypotheses have achieved this greater explanatory/predictive power or whether they have been made simply out of the necessity of offering some response in the face of new and troublesome evidence.

quantum_mcts 4y ago

"the world could well live without the Higgs boson" (c) Sabine Hossenfelder https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/what_it_means_to_be_antiscience-250570 https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/what_it_means_to_be...

saul_goodman 4y ago

Very good talk. However I would only disagree with her on the idea that funding will dry up for particle physicists and that the model of funding helps to drive the useless cycle if bad ideas in physics (and any government funded science). 1) Obtaining grants to continue study in any field of science is greatly improved if you are iterating on an established idea that is already understood. Getting a grant on a completely novel idea outside of the mainstream field of thoughts is going to be much harder. Along with this is the reality that government grants are managed by a revolving door of industry and university insiders which is both a terrible and great thing. On one hand you don't want lobotomized bureaunaughts making uninformed decisions on which researchers to support. On the other hand your knowledgable staff on granting agencies are going to be the ~top of a given field and as such will weed out non-mainstream ideas for funding as "they already know" that a new line of thought to be foley. 2) While governments freely waste taxpayers money, they still do it strategically. After Hiroshima the world understood how important it is to keep a close eye on the physics community. Every country with a viable nuclear program must continue to engage in this game of useless increments in particle physics. Making progress is not what is important, what is truly important is that a country has its own base of physics knowledge and active development so that should another physics breakthrough happen elsewhere then they have a chance of recreating it on their own within a short enough window for it to make a difference. If you didn't already have physicists engaged in their craft then you would be 5-10 years behind the curve of any post-nuclear-physics breakthrough. The same game is played in many other fields of science...